Portable audio players are popular consumer electronic products, and come in a variety of device formats, from cassette tape “boom boxes” to portable CD players to digital flash-memory and hard-disk MP3 players. While boom boxes are meant to make music to be shared among people, most of the portable audio players are designed for single person use. While some of this orientation to personal music listening is due to personal preference, other important considerations are the technical difficulties of reproducing music for open area listening with small, portable devices, as well as the social imposition of listening to music in public places with other people who do not wish to listen to the same music, or who are listening to different music that would interfere with one's own music.
There are numerous audio devices that are designed to allow the transfer of music from one portable audio device to another, especially through those that store music in the MP3 audio format. These devices suffer from two main difficulties: firstly, listeners still do not hear the music simultaneously, which is the optical manner to share music, and secondly, there are serious copyright issues associated with the transfer of music files. Thus, it would be preferable for the transfer of the music for simultaneous enjoyment, and which did not result in a permanent transfer of the music files between the devices, so as not to infringe on the intellectual property rights of the music owners.
Given the sharing of music, listeners will on occasion want to purchase the music for themselves. In such case, it would be beneficial for the user to have a way to obtain the music with minimal effort. It would further be desirable for there to be a way to keep track of the person from whom the listener heard the music, so that the person could be in some way encouraged or compensated.
The earphones associated with a portable music player admit a relatively constant fraction of ambient sound. If listening to music with a shared portable music device, however, one might at times want to talk with a friend, and at times listen to music without outside audible distraction. In such case, it would be desirable to have an earphone for which the amount of external ambient sound could be manually set.
Furthermore, many people like to show their individual preferences, to exhibit themselves, and to demonstrate their group membership. Furthermore, music preferences and listening to music together are among the more important means by which individuals express their individual and group identities. It would be beneficial for there to be a way for individuals to express themselves through their music, and for groups of individuals listening to music together, to be able to demonstrate their group enjoyment of the music.
One means for a person to express their identity through motion would be through having wearable transducers wherein the transduction signal is related to the music. If the transducer were a light transducer, this would result in a display of light related to the music that was being listened to. It would be further beneficial if there were means by which a person could generate control signals for the transducer so that instead of a wholly artificial response to the music, the transducer showed a humanly interpreted display. It would be preferable if these signals could be shared between people along with music files, so that others could entertain or appreciate the light display so produced.
At popular music concerts, there is often a “light show” that pulsates in rough relation to the music. In contrast to the generally vigorous light show, the patrons at the concerts often have light bracelets or other such static displays which are used to join with the displays on the stage. It would be beneficial for there to be a way in which patrons could participate in the light show in order to enhance their enjoyment of the concert.
It is to the solution of these and other problems that the present invention is directed.